I
had the good fortune to arrive in Key West during their annual "Hemingway
Days" festival. Today was one of the high points of the festival.

Las
Vegas has it's Elvis culture, with a formidable army of Elvis inpersonators
that seem to occupy just about every niche of that town. Key West, on the
other hand, has an equally impressive field of Hemingway look-alikes, both
locals and imports, who descend on the town (prominently the bars) to take
part in the Hemingway Days festivities, and to compete in the annual Ernest
Hemingway Look-Alike Contest. Frankly, I prefer the Key West tradition.

One of the main events of the festival is the "Pamplona Running of the
Bulls". Given the fact that I, along with many people, secretly harbor
a morbid fascination with the possibility of witnessing someone getting gored,
gutted and dismembered, I looked forward to the event.

The
local commentators also refer to it as the "Wandering of the Bulls",
the "Meandering of the Bulls", and the "Stumbling of the Bulls".
It seems tha sobriety was not a prerequisite for successful survival of the
event.

Besides
- if you lost a Hemingway or two, there were plenty more where they came from.

Of course, no consideration of Hemingway history would be complete without
a field trip to the location to which he offered so much of his attention,
which is, of course, Sloppy Joe's bar. Hemingway, being severly manic-depressive,
self-medicated with prodigous amounts of rum (Prozac and ZoLoft not being
invented yet).

There
is a Sloppy Joes in Key West, but the current establishment of that name is
not the original Sloppy Joes. The original is just down the street, and is
now called Captain
Tony's. Allow me to digress somewhat. In Scottsdale (my past, and hopefully
future, haunts) there is a steakhouse called the Pinnacle Peak Patio. Anyone
who wears a tie there will have in unceremoniously severed from his person,
and the remains will be hung in the rafters of the dining room ceiling. In
Captain Tony's, the have an analogous form of rafter decoration. I like their's
better. I was not fortunate enough, however, to witness a patron being divested
of her offending article by the tavern staff. It probably would have been
an interesting struggle.

An interesting fact (to me, but of probably no consequence to anyone else)
is that Captain Tony's birthday is the same as mine, August 10th. He has a
few years on me, though.